


We Have Arrived At This Place

by Trapelo_Road475



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Canonical Character Death, HC CSKA Moscow, M/M, Retrofic, Suicide Attempt, The Green Unit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 06:11:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5616553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trapelo_Road475/pseuds/Trapelo_Road475
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...and if Slava does wonder if he would have loved his Lyusha so hard if they were not imprisoned in their Army palace, he does not deny that he loved him at all."</p><p>Years after CSKA, and the Red Army, Slava has at last come far enough to be civil to Alexei Kasatonov</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Have Arrived At This Place

They have arrived at this: politeness, words exchanged like birds of politik, aside glances, shrewd and measuring. 

And sad. This too. Alexei might be described as somnolent in his expression if not morose - once, a long time ago, Slava joked that Lesha (he was Lesha, then) was holding up all the stereotypes the Americans had of the stoic, unsmiling Russian. But these jokes lie far back in the past, dormant if not dead. Slava will talk to Alexei, Alexei will talk to him. Hello, are you well, yes, goodbye. At times they attend the same meetings and talk of the same hockey.

Once, a long time ago, Slava refused to play for his country, because Alexei held a post and so did their tyranny - their old coach whose name Slava bites inside his back teeth because if he dares say it then all the rest will come out, too, and he cannot, he is not Igor, he won't say those things it was not all bad, there was Lesha - but Slava refused to play for tyranny's son, whom they called Viktor's boy.

Once upon a time they were both boys. At twenty-one, Slava felt like a breakwater, salt-roped and rough and tired. He was a boy. His hair curled out of his helmet and he didn't need to shave but once a week and he could still count his chest hairs on two hands. And then they gave him Alexei, to be his partner, and Alexei was shy at first, hardly looking up from under his hooded brows but his laugh was something like the shoreline, like the winter branches rattling, a hiccuping giggle. Alexei was shy at first and then he was Lesha, and Lyusha, and they could not have been closer. Even now Slava admits this: no two boys or men were ever so close as they. It was more than mutual loneliness, or the desperation of two young men alone, it was beaten into them, it was seared into them, and if Slava does wonder if he would have loved his Lyusha so hard if they were not imprisoned in their Army palace he does not deny that he loved him at all.

But Lyusha scurried to save his own hide from tyranny, and the one who salved his burns was Igor (Igorek, _lisachik_ , his little fox), and Lyusha became Alexei became Kasatonov, and in America no one knew the brusque insult that a surname was, because in America they still believed them robots and soulless and knew nothing of their spirit, their language, the way they bore their scars and loved their children.

(Bob Probert told him, once, that if he and Leda didn't put their Anastasia down for once they'd spoil her and Igor said, abruptly, there was no spoiling children. If holding them stopped their crying, then hold them. Bob Probert was an old mind, and didn't understand that parents had starved to feed their children, that parents would go without coat or boots to warm their children, that the ultimate cruelty of their tyranny was when he threatened their children because no one would do such a thing, not even the worst of anyone.)

They speak now. Slava's anger has mellowed some. Perhaps he is getting soft in his age (Igor would suggest so, but that is Igor's nature) or simply maturing. He is not a boy anymore (his belly attests, his grey hair irrefutable) and neither is Alexei, whose mouth is still pink and whose face is still morose. They say their little words. They speak of hockey. Slava sits in the presence of tyranny with his stomach churning and his teeth grinding but holds his tongue. Sometimes, he thinks (he fears) that Alexei's glances are pleading. They remind him of long ago, Alexei at 19, looking at him as if from far away or in a cage. They remind him of falling in love with his Lyusha, determined with all he had to spring that giggle forth from his lips. He can't abide that, the searching look. He knows - or thought he knew - Alexei's soul and bared his own. 

When Vladimir dies, they all come to the funeral, encased in private grief. Slava looks at his friend's body, at the excision of his soul, gone to God. This is not how he wants to remember a man he loved as a brother, a man who defended him openly, who was the first to say: we will not play without him. Vladimir wasted no words but he was a rock and now he is only flesh decaying, slowly, in the early summer heat. Slava wants to cry. He feels the sensation in his chest, but nothing happens. He is aware of the nothing, the confused pathway between grief and his expression. He was beaten once, by soldiers, in the woods at their Army palace, and there was a point past which he felt nothing, and looked on himself as if he sat perched in a tree: there he was, beaten so hard he would piss blood, and he knew he should feel something but it wouldn't happen, as if some wire had been cut.

He bites his lip. Vladimir is dead. Tyranny speaks at the funeral. All Slava feels is hate.

A year and a half passes and Vladimir lies dead in the ground, probably scraps and bones. Igorek is a thousand places at once, never still, fox that he is. Alexei is here and there. Tyranny outlives Vladimir and Seryozha calls him once, drunk, railing, but not crying, about the damn bastard that brought them here, not to this place but to what they are, and yes, he changed them and yes, he changed hockey, but Vladik is dead, and what does it matter now?

Do the eyes of Viktor's boy grow deeper in sorrow? Slava knew every nuance of his expression once. 

For a while, they scout the same tournaments, not so much scouting as observing and bringing their observances to politics. Slava is deft with words - not like Iga, but he is more patient, and he can do the dance of what-is-true-and-what-they-want far better than his fox ever could.

Then for a while, Slava does not see Alexei. A strange emotion carves its way out into the forefront of his mind: he misses this. Not his friend, but the presence of him. Like when he went to America and played as if his arm had been cut off - no one knew what to do, how to play the game, and he could not talk to them, he could not tell them the secrets coach Anatoly had given him before tyranny had stolen his pain and soured his eyes. His body hungered for his brothers, craved their space, their touch, their voices. As now: he steps into the press box, or slumps into the high stands and Alexei is not there.

No one seems to know anything, but he does not ask, does not dare to ask.

It is Seryozha, finally, who tells him - and Seryozha is cautious, hidden behind dark glasses, hands in pockets. Hasn't Alexei called you? Hasn't his wife?

No. No one had.

"Why?"

Seryozha shuffles, side to side. Like all of them he would be taken for a conference with the coach and hours of it spent shuffling, or still, as tyranny screamed at him about his cowardice, his worthlessness. Seryozha shifts foot to foot like a boy. He was a boy. They all were.

"Alexei tried to kill himself."

Slava feels that uncertain emotion again. The press of sorrow against his chest.

"Didn't you know?"

No, of course not. 

"Thank you," he says. "For telling me."

Seryozha shrugs.

Alexei lives in Moscow, and his wife lives in New Jersey. None of them has ever settled properly. Their hearts fear burial, if they stop too long. Alexei's wife has been staying with him. When Slava arrives he tries to speak and can't: and as if she knows too much, his wife slips past him, out the apartment door. 

Alexei sits on the couch as if he has taken root and his face is blotchy and his eyes are dark. Not wet but dark. Deep in sorrow as an autumn pond, still but for leaves. The dying season. Slava looks for marks: for scars, for what has changed, if anything at all. Alexei wears a t-shirt and sweatpants and thick socks, such as they might have often worn in November at CSKA, perhaps all five of them piled on one sofa, and Slava pictures it so clearly and abruptly that it hurts: there they are, the Green unit, Lesha on one end, Slava against him, Seryozha and Vladik reading the same magazine, Igor being wrangled onto all their laps when he claims he will not fit. They would be laughing. Deftly, Alexei would tickle Igor, who hardly ever laughed but roars (or squeaks) with it then, and he thrashes so hard his glasses fall off and Seryozha hits him with the magazine and Vladik grins too, and Slava holds him steady so Lesha can get more leverage. God, they were boys, weren't they? Not soldiers, just dumb young men, the pride of a nation and imprisoned for their lives.

Slava goes to him with this thought in mind.

With stronger still, the memory of lying in bed with him in another apartment in Moscow. Alexei rarely went home to Leningrad and would come home with Slava, and was a perfect second big brother (nearly a brother's twin) to Tolik and his papa adored his three boys and his mom would cook for them and do their laundry and at night they shared Slava's bed, under generations of quilts. Warm, just nice. The sounds of life in other apartments. Moscow-life. Russian city. Home, the smell of his brother-lover-Lyusha's shoulder in the dark. 

When he wraps his arms around Alexei he is crying, a peculiar sensation that begins in his throat and puddles from his eyes like bleeding. Alexei's breath rasps. I am sorry, he whispers. Forgive me, Slavka, I am sorry, I am sorry, please, don't forgive me, don't. I couldn't get it right, Slava, I tried. I loved you, I always did.

They are not young but they are, inside, just boys, bent and beholden to a system that could as soon skin them as gild them, and what are they now, but what Seryozha says, just damned inside? Would he have loved Lesha so fiercely on any other team? Would he have loved him at all?

Does it matter to ask now, he thinks. Does it matter when Alexei might have been dead, and he would not have known? 

I am sorry, don't forgive me.

Don't be sorry. I loved you.


End file.
